this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Vonnegut is kind of right here, but the emphasis is wrong. It’s not that people ‘blame themselves’ for being poor exactly (in a moral sense), but rather the material condition of poverty strips one of dignity and self-worth, particularly in a society that is oriented around the petite-bourgeois middle class and relegates those below to a kind of wasteland devoid of opportunities for community and self-development
people have existed with far less material wealth than the poor in the US do, its the system that chokes the life from us which imposes poverty, that system which blames us and raises us from birth to blame ourselves for this condition so that they may continue to leave us poor so they may be rich
True, but people will always judge themselves relative to their surroundings. And it is hard in the wealthy West to be poor without feeling (and actually being) ‘outside’ of society, which most people will respond to by feeling ashamed. In so far as self-hatred exists I think that’s the primary source of it.
Whereas it sounds like Vonnegut is saying the poor could love themselves except they have some kind of moral need to blame themselves for their condition, which (in my opinion) is not entirely accurate to what’s happening